Quote

What attracts me in photography is not so much a fine arts approach, but rather photographs as documents... All the ways in which human beings have documented the world in an attempt to order it, in an attempt to consume it or rule it or hang on to it in some sense.

Zoe Leonard

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Zoe Leonard
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: January 1
Activist
Artist
Photographer
Printmaker
Video Artist
Liberty
New York
Art
Rule
Attracts
Order
Photography
Consume
Human
Beings
Documents
Humans
Approach
Photographs
Much
Fine
Hang
Way
Ways
Attempt
World
Rather
Arts
Sense
Photograph
Documented

More quotes by Zoe Leonard

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The career has to support the making and can offer a platform, can offer you a voice in the world. And that's an incredible thing. But it's complicated and seductive and weird and tricky. I think you have to keep figuring that out your whole life.
Zoe Leonard
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I never heard the term art world until I was in my thirties, and I was like, What are you guys talking about? It's the world, and we all live in the world!
Zoe Leonard
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The world feels overwhelming to me on every level. Just the number of organisms that live on this planet. Our politics, our violence, psychology, emotions there's just a lot going on, right?
Zoe Leonard
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Something about photography is tied to a very specific relationship with the material world. It doesn't have to be, but the way I practice it, it is. So there's an act of observation, but it's not an act of objective recording. It's about framing something and seeing it and understanding that it's relational.
Zoe Leonard
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I'm always amazed at how people make work no matter how intense the pressure.
Zoe Leonard
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If the work is the horse, a career makes a great cart.
Zoe Leonard
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Making work for me is being in the world, but it's also being specific about being in the world. I'm interested in this increasingly rare space of contemplation and taking the time and energy to be thoughtful.
Zoe Leonard
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You need to have your eyes open because it's really scary what's happening.
Zoe Leonard
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I'd grown up poor I had no idea what it was like to be comfortable.
Zoe Leonard
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I choose to work behind the camera. And I kind of want to make the work and then run away. The presentation of myself really feels complicated for me.
Zoe Leonard
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Photographers talk about their shoot ratio. Like four to one, six to one, ten to one! Whatever, I'm, like, seven billion to one. It is just ridiculous. But sometimes if you can hit it just right and get everything out of the way, something will resonate on multiple levels.
Zoe Leonard
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I'll finish a body of work and think, Okay, I got nothing. That was it. I'm done. And then you'll turn a corner and be like, Oh my God! And it keeps happening. I feel so lucky.
Zoe Leonard
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I'm always learning. I can't imagine doing anything else.
Zoe Leonard
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I grew up in Harlem, but I moved to the Lower East Side when I was a teenager and it was ... I feel like when I try to describe it, it doesn't sound believable. It just sounds like you're lying. And I see it on the faces of my younger friends.
Zoe Leonard
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What I've always liked about photography is that it's such a direct way of showing what's on my mind. I see something. I show it to you.
Zoe Leonard
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By nature, I'm a little distractible. I get very overwhelmed by the world.
Zoe Leonard
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I'm in all of my work, and there's nowhere to hide when you make work.
Zoe Leonard
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There's a lot of psychological material that you inherit from your family.
Zoe Leonard
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Progress is always an exchange. We gain something, we give something else up. I'm interested in looking at some of what we are losing.
Zoe Leonard
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There's a desire for me in the work, even when I'm looking at the past, to be looking from the present. It's to be here now. It's looking in the present tense.
Zoe Leonard